Posts Tagged ‘Film’

A new documentary on the trash picking Zabaleen community of Cairo may peak the horizon. REORIENT, an online magazine featuring Middle Eastern arts and culture, this week profiles director and cinematographer Justin Kramer on the two-and-a-half year process of shooting Zabaleen.

photo via REORIENT

Kramer tells the reporter:

I had to spend a lot of time with these families before they trusted me enough. They’re very marginalised. What they do is sort of taboo, and they were reluctant to open up to an American guy who barely speaks the same language’

A moving and naturally-paced excerpt of the film entitled “Mourad’s Morning” can be viewed on VIMEO, which includes the following description:

Mourad’s mornings are all the same. He wakes up at 2am. Then, he fights to get his sons out of bed for an hour before leaving late for his garbage route in Shoubra.

This piece was submitted and accepted into Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School in London March 2011.

Sounds very promising.

A now-completed Kickstarter campaign includes a brief video message from Kramer and cites the blog The Zabaleen Project as the documentary’s website. It appears to be an interesting compilation of Zabaleen news, including an automated filter for the latest #zabaleen tweets.

Here’s hoping the final product makes the rounds on the film festival circuit and makes its way to screenings we can all attend. In the meantime, to bone up on Zabaleen issues, check out:

Last night I saw two amazing short films from Haiti as part of fi:af’s World Nomads program. The first and more trash-relevent of the two was the international debut of a feature directed by Louis Ebby Angel and made in collaboration with his fellow students of Ciné Institute, the island nation’s first and only film school. As the name suggests, plastic is a theme incorporated in the plot. You can watch it in its entirety here.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

During the Q&A that followed, the director mentioned he had friends who use plastic in creative ways to draw attention to Haiti’s land and water pollution. He described elaborate costumes for carnival made of salvaged plastic. Rest assured, I am now on the hunt for images!

The second film was an INCREDIBLE documentary called Mrs. Little Bones (Madame Ti Zo) about a nearly hundred-year-old midwife praciticing in the hills of rural Haiti. It was directed by David Belle, founder of Ciné Institute and contains the most amazing closing credits sequence in the history of film. Track it down.